Alternative Income Streams Progress – August 2007

With the beginning of the month comes my alternative income update. This month, the magic word is “perspective.” Last night, my wife’s car got broken into. Our Magellan GPS was stolen – a loss of about $400. There was $300 worth of damage. Her “emergency” $20 bill was stolen as well. Insurance will cover some amount of this, but a $500 deductible doesn’t make it really worth much. So keeping this $720 loss in perspective, I more than balanced it by making $817 after my estimated taxes. That’s a little over $100 more than I earned last month when I made $712 via side businesses, interest, and dividends.

I went to look at my necessary expenses to see how much $817 would cover. It’s a little shy of my houses expenses of $1049, but it’s enough to cover my transportation, HELOC loan, groceries, internet & cable, gas and electricity, cell phone, property insurance, water, and home phone and still have some money left over. It’s important to note that I’ve halved all these expenses as in the past my fiancee covered the other half. Now that we are married, I should update the necessary expenses to represent our total costs. However, I’ll save that exercise until October when my alternative income quest turns one year old.

The most important thing with these ‘victimless’ crimes is to be thankful that there was no direct victim. The important thing to remember is that your alternative income will still be coming next month, while the ’emergency’ expenses, hopefully, will not.

Lazy,
I am impressed by your ability to make such good progress on your Alt Incomes. Can you shed anymore light on where this growth is coming from? Im guessing most of its coming from the blog – but Im wondering how much grow is coming from dividends/prosper/etc.

I purposely don’t want wish to break it out at this point other than to say that this blog is a majority of it. I’m hoping that Lazy Man and Health will join in an be profitable as well as some other websites that are attached to my real name (and thus not mentionable in this space). Prosper, dividends, and interest isn’t exactly insignificant. In a couple of years, I hope to add income from rental property into that. It’s break-even at best now, but if I can raise rents (which I should be able to do at that point), it will add some income.

It’s okay, I should link to an FAQ, because I can see how it can be confusing for my newer readers.

At the time, I started my fiancee (now my wife) divided the expenses. Thus people that feed a whole family will see my food costs as very low. Furthermore, my day job gives me free lunch each day and free dinner if I stay until around 6:30-7PM (which isn’t a problem since the workday starts at 10AM for most people). When you are able to eliminate these costs, the expenses are quite low. I might still be underestimating it a bit because toiletries and such add up.

Though I price everything to the dollar, it is all an estimate. The hope is that I’m within plus or minus 10% of that estimate. I try to not let perfect be the enemy of good.

Congratulations… I usually abid by the 80/20 rule in all things. particualrly reallocation… just buy more to rebalance… no need to sell. If I have to wait until next year (IRA) to balance an ira contribution that is what I do.

Connect

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